Tag: Elementary school

The questions were simple enough. “What about basic supplies? What about the laptops? What about the crayons? What about the things multiple hands touch over a short period of time every day?”

The man at the end of the call asked the questions of the teacher’s union president. It was following a discussion of what we will need to do to safely re-open schools in what many hope will soon be a post COVID-19 world.

The call was 5 days ago.

I have asked myself “What about the crayons?” innumerable times since I heard this teacher ask. The union president was stumped, but to his credit, collected this teacher’s contact information to add him to future focus groups.

There is so much we just don’t know.

I have tried to stay present, not to stray too far from the moment. I have tried to remain in an attitude of gratitude for my ability to work from home, the health of my family, and our financial stability.

But, my mind strays from tragedies, milestones missed, and seasons not played, to an uncertain future. We receive conflicting messages daily, through multiple elected representatives, doctors, and ordinary citizens. Everyone feels adamantly one way or another about a variety of issues.

But, what about the crayons?

It’s a basic enough question, that may seem like no big deal if you haven’t spent the last 23 years in an elementary school. It’s the kind of question that will easily be brushed aside regardless of how many times it’s asked.

But, maybe it’s one of the most important questions.

Through the years of teaching I have seen a lot of changes, and I have not always embraced them willingly. Some, I would argue still, are pure nonsense. Others have made me a better educator. In reality, like so many other things in life, what I agree with is not wholly relevant.

When I started teaching we had desks. Students had desks. Teachers had desks. Everyone had their own supplies. Students largely worked alone. Slowly, there were times it was appropriate to do “group work” where we would move desks together for collaboration, only to later return them to their original separate space.

Through the years, desks became tables and teacher’s desks were eliminated. There were bins on tables for shared items. Books were kept on shelves, and folders kept in bins. Everything required a monitor to hand it out. The tables were 6 sided, making separating children a challenge, you know, for those activities that shouldn’t be done in groups. So we added “dividers” also stored, and distributed as needed.

Slowly, desks have made a comeback, as everything old is new again, and supplies are often kept in the desks for the older children, but many of the youngest still work from tables.

We are supposed to teach them to collaborate. We are supposed to teach them to work in groups. We are supposed to teach them to get along, in addition to, well, TEACHING them.

About 10 years ago I shifted from teaching in a classroom of my own students to teaching as a “cluster” teacher, in a position to provide preparation periods for the classroom teachers as per our contract. I serve as a math cluster, a position many see as odd, but one I love. My role in this position is to help all children love math.

I have evolved over the years from a hesitant, controlling teacher, to one who embraces productive student noise and activity. Although I see students from kindergarten through 4th grade, my room still has those six-sided tables. Most lessons are hands on, using everything from play-doh, to stamp pads, to puzzles, to counters, to fraction bars and many more. My children share pencils, 12 at a table. They also share scissors, and glue, and rulers, and hundreds charts, and teaching coins, and that is only some of what is in every table bin. As 5 classes a day, 25 classes a week, and roughly 600 students a week sit at my tables and handle my math tools, monitors count and keep order. Desks are washed often and hand sanitizer flows freely.

But, there is no part of me that thinks it’s enough.

The giggling joy of children battling number facts, playing dice games, building numbers with play-doh, and solving number puzzles together has become a sound that I truly enjoy. My room is noisy, active, and largely fun.

It’s a stark contrast to some other aspects of life.

I take seriously the task to encourage a passionate love of math. I am thrilled to be a safe space, where tests are minimal, informal assessment rules, groups are fluid and the majority of children get to feel successful.

Maybe I learned how important that excitement for education was after our Cowden’s Syndrome diagnosis in 2012. Something about surviving a sneaky cancer, and watching your own child lose a good deal of innocence on exam tables, and in operating rooms, makes you more in touch with the value of “productive, happy noise.”

My girl was in 3rd Grade when we were formally diagnosed, but in truth she has ALWAYS been dealing with health issues. I watched her elementary school experience. I know as an only child with two working parents, largely unavailable to meet others to play, social isolation came early. I know she had tons of alone time, and subsequently too much adult time.

I know the teachers that changed her life for the better, to whom I will be eternally grateful, and I know the ones who just changed her.

She never liked math. I could always get her to understand, but it made her nervous. It still does. She never “played” math. Like so much else, it was a task to master, not an experience to have.

Maybe because it was easier to read during the hours of waiting, in traffic, in offices, in hospitals, and during recovery. Or maybe because it wasn’t fun. I’ll never know.

She never really handled crayons much either. Or math tools. And she was allergic to the wheat in the play-doh….

So, I set out to make my math room a place that could maybe change the perception of one kid. Maybe I could help one kid believe they could be good at math, or that math was fun.

I have a system set up. There are 5 bins of every math tool you can imagine. When they need crayons there are three fresh boxes poured out into bins that match the color of their table baskets. The older kids usually have a focused lesson in different levels. The little guys often rotate through a few activities to keep them moving and keep things developmentally appropriate.

Which brings me back to the crayons.

As my colleague on that call pointed out, it was laptops, crayons, and everything in between.

It is my entire program. It is all things hands on and developmentally appropriate for our youngest learners.

No one knows.

I have had many sleepless nights since we began

#beatingcowdens

Very few things leave a mom as unsettled as her child’s health.

But, a close second might be asking a primary teacher, “What about the crayons?“

No matter how hard I try. No matter how much I trust. No matter how much I pray. There will be some things I will never understand. Ever.

Today a generally healthy 11-year-old boy, a 6th grader from the neighborhood died. A few days ago he stopped breathing, and today he is gone.

The details leading to the tragedy just don’t even matter, as much as the fact that it happened at all.

When I began teaching, his mom taught with us. It wasn’t long before she would take childcare leave to build her family of three. We were not close friends, but colleagues still the same, and close enough that I am absolutely sickened by the loss she and her family are enduring.

Years later the children would come, first through my school, then another local elementary school. The two boys are in Junior High. The 8th grader, the oldest, is just two years ahead of the little brother who passed. Their sister is a 3rd grader.

The family is just like any of ours. The mom was a teacher, dad a police officer. They were the “regular” family.

This is the stuff nightmares are made from.

Even though we live in a “big city,” our borough is a small town. There is so much interconnection in this area it seems everyone knows someone.

I was not “friends” with the family. We chatted when we saw each other, but our kids didn’t play together. We weren’t “close.” Yet still I am heartsick.

I know families who have lost children. I know mothers who continue to function after burying their babies, and fathers who get up and one day go back to work. I am in awe of their strength. I can not imagine the depths to which the loss of a child changes you.

And we seem to hear of it all the time. There are tragedies, school shootings, traffic accidents, and the like. There is cancer and its far-reaching effects. There are countless rare diseases that I learn more about each day, that rob parents of their children way too soon.

Chronic illness is not fun. It can be downright difficult to bear at times. But tonight again I will thank God for Cowden’s Syndrome, because despite the headaches and trauma it can cause us, it is a blessing. We have a warning system. We have constant screenings that will likely protect us from the ominous cancers looking to attack. We are blessed.

I do not by any means think that any type of loss is easy to bear.

The loss of my cousin shaped my existence as a person, but even I never fully recovered. I still pray for her parents and her sister.

I was in the 6th grade when a friend from my church was hit by a car and killed on the school bus stop. No criminal charges. Just regular kids playing. And then they weren’t. I remember the whole experience vividly 30 years later.

A few weeks ago I stood by the side of a work associate whose 39-year-old daughter had died of cancer. No words.

One of these parents told me there is a reason there is no word to describe a parent who has lost a child. The grief can not be contained in words.

I just can not for even a moment imagine the shock and trauma when you put your healthy 11 year old child to bed, and he doesn’t get up.

Tonight my heart is with the family. The mom and dad, the brother and sister, as well as all the extended family and close friends whose lives are forever altered.

I will pray that God holds them all so tightly, and that He binds them close together, and showers them with His love.

I can remember as if it were yesterday, walking the halls of the elementary school where I am a teacher, in the hours after I had heard of the horrors of 9/11. I attended the same school as a child. I knew that the lives of the young second graders I now taught would never be as happy and carefree as mine; some 20 years prior to that day when everything changed. It was an eerie feeling. One that I knew would be realized gradually. It was a moment I have reflected on countless times through the years.

Friday was a busy day. I never stopped for lunch, and it was 6th period before a colleague mentioned the shooting in Newton, Connecticut. At that point the details were still extremely sketchy, and while I was troubled, I was not nearly as disturbed as I would come to be over the next few hours.

As the details of what had transpired at Sandy Hook Elementary school began to unfold this weekend, I was, like any other compassionate human, horrified and appalled.

I send my child, my heart and soul, to a school a few minutes from where I work. The staff is dedicated, and caring. Honestly, I never gave her safety a second thought. But, after visualizing the entrance to her school – so close to the cafeteria, often full of children. Well, my mind when left unattended can do some awful things.

And then there is my own school. The school I attended as I child. The school I have taught at for 16 years. The children who are the siblings of others I have taught. The families I have known for years. I think about these children often. I talk about them at home as if they are part of my family. I live each day with the knowledge that I am entrusted to educate, and keep safe, someone’s “heart and soul.” This is not a responsibility taken lightly.

I know the exuberance of a room full of 6 and 7 year olds. I know the electricity in the air in the weeks before Christmas. I know the love in a teacher’s heart when she hides her students in closets, or tells them she loves them.

What I do not know, what I can not imagine or comprehend, is the heart of a man who walks into a school building and kills – 20 children and 6 adults. I can not know. Nor do I want to.

It is not my place to judge him. It is not my place to publicly state his wrongdoing. I have a strong faith, and I leave the sorting out of all that to God.

I know with confidence that those who died, as young innocent children, or their protectors, were welcomed warmly though Heaven‘s gates. They are not the ones I worry about anymore.

As a parent of an ill child, especially one that suffers with a ruthless rare disease like Cowden’s Syndrome, I do not know a day of peace. I worry from sun up to sun down about tumors, and growths, and headaches, and hot flashes, and lingering maladies that don’t suit a 9 year old. I am always at the ready because I don’t know what we will be fighting next. But I can tell you this- there is no part of me that would trade places for a second with these families.

I have the blessing, if you will, of knowing something about our enemy. We have the ability to be proactive. We can battle. We can prepare. We get tired, but we can win.

Evil ripped these lives from their families. There is nothing they could have done better. or differently There is nothing they could have fixed or prevented. They went to school. They went to work. And they died.

So, what can you take from this whole nightmare?

I will take from it that I need to do more of what I do every day. I need to hug my daughter and my husband. I need to tell them I love them every time it crosses my mind. I need to serve ice cream for dinner sometimes, because its fun and silly. I need to look less at the clock and more at them.

I need to prepare for the holidays with a different mindset. I need to organize, but not to a fault. If the cookies don’t get baked – I need to buy them. If the cabinet’s don’t get cleaned, I need to serve extra wine so no one notices. If I can’t cook it, I will order it. And come Christmas Day we will sit as a family. We will count our blessings, and remember our lost loved ones. We will understand that we are all different – and we are all the same.

The battles we face in our house are real. The journey is not always easy, but every day that we are together is a blessing. And there is no promise of tomorrow together on this earth.

Monday will be here in a few hours. I will send my little girl on the bus to school, with an extra lump in my throat. I will head the short distance to my school where I will look at everything with an eye towards awareness. I will look at my students and remember the lumps in their parents throats. I will look at my colleagues and respect that we all have the same goals in mind.

And when my phone rings, and I get the news about my spleen – bad or good. I will take a deep breath and keep on swimming. No matter how tough things can get, it could always be worse.

May God, and all the angels above surround the families and friends of all the victims. And may they all rest in peace.